GOP advances Price, Mnuchin to full vote
By
There are many reasons that concern about maintaining norms when dealing with the GOP (as it exists today, not the one from 50 years ago or the imaginary one some people want to pretend exists) is inappropriate. The chief reason is that the GOP doesn’t care about norms.
Senate Republicans took an extraordinary step Wednesday to move forward with two of President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet nominees after confronting a boycott from Democrats.
Republican lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee — the panel that oversees the nominations of Steve Mnuchin to be Treasury secretary and Rep. Tom Price to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services — gathered for the second day in a row with Democrats on the committee refusing to show up.
Orrin Hatch, combines scolding with gaslighting to explain why it was perfectly OK, someone else said it was OK and this is the Democrats’ fault, anyway.
“They on their own accord refused to participate in the exercise,” Hatch said about the Democrats on the committee. “They have nobody to blame but themselves.”
Hatch said the Senate Parliamentarian had approved of the procedural maneuver, and insisted to reporters after the exercise was a “just utilization” of the rules. “This is all approved by the Parliamentarian,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been.”
The idea of a general strike on Feb. 17 is starting to sound better and better.
